Animation

Description

Animation has a positive influence on increasing student motivation and is one of the most interactive multimedia tools available for assisting the learning process. It helps to elaborate and explain dynamic concepts and concepts that involve movements that are either invisible or too small to be easily visible to eyes. Therefore, it is good for: portraying movement and change, presenting dynamic subjects, demonstrating abstract concepts, depicting subjects that are difficult to understand, and introducing complex systems or concepts to students.

Implementation

Nevertheless, designing good animations can be challenging. Mayer (2002, p. 93-97) mentioned seven general principles in developing good animations and we think can be of reference to our teachers:

• Multimedia principle: Adding narration to animations will provide a clearer explanation for learners.
• Spatial contiguity principle: Placing animations next to on-screen text means that students can review the contents simultaneously.
• Temporal contiguity principle: Presenting information simultaneously with narration, rather than presenting them successively, will facilitate memory.
• Coherence principle: Excluding any extra words and sounds, such as background music, reduces possible distractions to students.
• Modality principle: Avoiding presenting both words and pictures visually to prevent the overloading of the visual channel.
• Redundancy principle: Avoid presenting animation, narration and on-screen text simultaneously. Instead, students can learn the better by making good use of their visual channel to watch the animation and auditory channel to hear the narration if only animation and narration were presented simultaneously.
• Personalisation principle: Using conversational narration rather than formal narration makes it easier to understand the context.

 

Extended reading

Betrancourt, M. (2005). The animation and interactivity principles in multimedia learning. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (pp. 287–296). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lester, J. C., Towns, S. G., & FitzGerald, P. J. (1999). Achieving affective impact: Visual emotive communication in lifelike pedagogical agents. The International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education, 10(3–4), 278–291.

Lowe, R. K. (2004). Animation and learning: Value for money? In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer, & R. Phillips (Eds.), Beyond the Comfort Zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 558-561). Perth, 5−8 December. Teachers can click on the link below for more information:
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/lowe-r.html

Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2002). Animation as an aid to multimedia learning. Educational Psychology Review, 14(1), 87–99. CUHK teachers can click on the link below for more information: http://www.springerlink.com/content/n553476502221380/fulltext.pdf

Tversky, B., Morrison, J. B., & Betrancourt, M. (2002). Animation: Can it facilitate? International Journal of Human–Computer Studies, 57(4), 247–262.